


A Feeling Like Floating

by elanorofcastile



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Portal - Freeform, Portal 2 - Freeform, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanorofcastile/pseuds/elanorofcastile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You got sucker's luck...<br/>Have you given up?<br/>Does it feel like a trial?<br/>Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Feeling Like Floating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StolenBlueBox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StolenBlueBox/gifts).



> Many thanks go out to xtinethepirate, my darling beta. She straightened me out in a couple places and prodded me along the way. Also thanks to wook77 for cheerleading and letting me bounce crazy ideas off of her.
> 
> This is my first Portal fic and I wanted to play with the fun tidbits the game gives you for backstory and flesh out what could have happened to Chell. That said, there are spoilers for both games as well as information snagged from the comic Portal 2: Lab Rat. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Summary from "Exile Vilify" by The National.

She is nine and there is a hand in hers, leading her to an office. The man wants to talk to her about the special ingredient Dad let her use. It made the potato grow so much, and she thinks she could be a scientist like Dad when she gets big. But the man leading her to the office isn't nice; he makes her go to a room that looks like their old apartment, and then never comes back. Chell is nine and all she can hear is screaming.

~*~

She thinks she is twenty and there is a voice and she's groggy. Time isn't the same as it was Before. There is a moment where she doesn't recognize her body and she wants to scream, but she doesn't make a sound, _can't_ make a sound. The metal prosthetics coming out of her knees are still terrifying, but the counter hits zero and she walks through the blue portal into the test.

~*~

She is so tired that she doesn't care when everything explodes. As she is lifted off the ground, Chell doesn't struggle, glad for the opportunity to rest. Everything is brighter — a different sort of light than the test chambers — and she closes her eyes against the glare. It's a hard shock when she hits a solid surface, debris falling around her, and she opens her eyes again. Is that... sky? and trees? She's out, she's free.

The elation doesn't last long before she hears the grating sound of something approaching, and then she's being dragged away by cold metal grasp of the Party Escort Bot. She wants to cry out in anger, because she was so _close_ , but there is a sting of a needle, and she's pushed under.

~*~

She wakes up when her tummy rumbles. The screaming has stopped, but Chell doesn't want to come out from the closet she'd tucked herself into. She doesn't know what's going on, but she has stopped crying and her cheeks are dry. All she wanted to do was see Dad's office, peek at the lab, but now she just wants to go home.

Once she's sure everything is still quiet, she opens the closet door. It's still the same, boring room, so she quietly stands up and tiptoes around. There is a small refrigerator and a microwave, but no computer, and the phone doesn't make a sound when she picks it up. Chell's lip trembles, wanting to wake up from this bad dream _right now_.

Before she can see if there's anything in the refrigerator to make her tummy stop growling, Chell hears footsteps outside the door. She wants to run back into the closet, but she's frozen, terrified that something is going to make her scream, too. The door opens and it's just a man, a scientist in a white coat. He doesn't look hurt, just scared like her.

He tells her that they need to get out before _she_ finds them, that he knows a way. She takes his hand and follows him, closing her eyes when he tells her to so she doesn't see the bad things that have happened, but they don't make it far before the doors slam shut around them. A cold voice tells them there's no reason to run; they'll just die tired if they do. Chell doesn't cry this time, even when the security camera swings around to point at her.

~*~

She might be sixteen (she doesn't trust the way time passes here) and the scientists tell her she's doing well. She doesn't speak, hasn't spoken since the screaming, and they just sigh and shake their heads. "Abnormally stubborn" is what their reports will read when they are found later, but if Chell wanted to respond she would say there was no reason to speak. She wasn't a person anymore; she was just another test subject for GLaDOS to play with.

The lights slowly brighten in her room, a small hatch opens in the ceiling, and confetti falls. GLaDOS tells her it's her birthday and there is cake in the dining hall if she follows the Party Escort Bot. Chell is wary, but follows anyway. If nothing else, the change in routine is welcome.

She sees the cake before anything else in the dining hall registers. It's so out of place in the steel, concrete, and plastic of the entire Enrichment Center that she can't look away, not realizing that something is wrong until she is grabbed.

There are flashes of pain and terror that cut through the sedation until she wakes in her room again. There is something wrong with her body, but she can't move yet. All she can do is roll her head to the side to try to look down. Something glows softly from the area of her knees and the implications turn her stomach. They did _something_ to her, something to her _body_. There really is no way she's getting out now.

~*~

She wakes in the room in which it all started. It makes her wonder if she is nine again; if it really all was a dream. Her legs aren't heavy with the prosthetics any more, but moving to sit up as the computer greets her disabuses her of any hope. There are scars on her knees where the prosthetics were removed. If the voice is to be believed, they were broken in her escape and capture fifty days ago. If.

Going through the motions of stretching and moving after laying still for so long is enough to make her shake, and she has to sit back down on the bed. The hiss of gas from the hatch in the ceiling worries her, but as she breathes it in the euphoria makes everything better, so she lays flat and falls back asleep.

~*~

When GLaDOS lets her go, Chell worries it is another trick, but the sea of grass in front of her looks real. The air smells different — clean and unrecycled — and as the Companion Cube is tossed out and the door slammed shut, Chell isn't sure what to do next.

She picks a direction and starts walking.

~*~

She is sitting as still as she can while Mom brushes her hair and asks her questions about her potato battery. Mom wants her to be ready in case anyone asks her about science, to show them that she's smarter than the other girls in her class. Chell thinks science is awesome and she can't wait to grow up and work at Aperture with Dad. This is going to be the best day ever.


End file.
